Simulmediahttp://www.adweek.com/taxonomy/term/10673/all
enSimulmedia’s New CMO Sees the Future of TVhttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/simulmedia-s-new-cmo-sees-future-tv-159902
Lauren Johnson<p>
<img alt="" src="/files/uploads/SPACER-652.gif" style="width: 10px; height: 1px; " /><br />
<u><strong>Specs</strong></u><br />
<strong>Who&nbsp;</strong>David Cooperstein<br />
<strong>New gig</strong> CMO of Simulmedia<br />
<strong>Old gig</strong> Vp, practice leader for the CMO practice at Forrester Research<br />
<strong>Age </strong>48<br />
<strong>Twitter </strong><a href="https://twitter.com/minicooper" target="_blank">@Minicooper</a><br />
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<img src="/files/imagecache/node-detail/david-cooperstein-01-2014.jpg" />
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<span class="meta-credit">Photo: Alfred Maskeroni</span></p>
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&nbsp;<strong>How will your experience at Forrester play a role in your new job?</strong><br />
It was pretty interesting for me to get the call to come here because I&rsquo;ve been dealing with CMOs for the last five years. I think as they saw digital starting to become fundamental to what they&rsquo;re doing, there are things that still need to get done&mdash;like planning out what does TV look like because TV&rsquo;s still a major medium.<br />
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<strong>What needs to change with how TV ads are bought?</strong><br />
TV is still handled in a very traditional way. <a href="/node/158383">TV needs to become a more digital business</a>. And I don&rsquo;t mean that in terms of just marketing, but in terms of the way that TV needs to operate [and] align with the way in which digital operates from a measurability, targeting and creative way of buying media.<br />
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<strong>How do you plan to pitch that to brands and agencies?</strong><br />
The goal will be to not talk so much about what the company does day-to-day, to [talking about] where people are actually spending their time on TV, and how [marketers are] buying ad inventory for that. The other piece of it is a conversation about what&rsquo;s happening in the future of TV&mdash;not just about what&rsquo;s happening right here in front of us.<br />
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<strong>If TV is still going to be dominant for marketers, what&rsquo;s the opportunity like right now for other devices? </strong><br />
I think there&rsquo;s use cases [around] understanding the context of how someone is watching something and the ability to change the way you apply advertising to that particular event. The same hockey game or baseball game that&rsquo;s being aired on <a href="/node/158482">TV is going to have a different model of advertising</a> than something that&rsquo;s being seen on a small screen. And marketers have to understand how to adjust their message to the person that is watching and then make sure that the technology is set up so that the right ad is delivered to that particular medium.<br />
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<strong>What is the biggest difference in going from the research world to the ad-tech world? </strong><br />
The one really sharp piece of advice I got from one of my CMO contacts was, &ldquo;Whatever you do, remain objective,&rdquo; which is a delicate balance for a CMO to have because you want to be a marketer. But on the other hand, being objective will retain the credibility of the brand.<br />
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<strong>Do CMOs understand digital marketing and media?</strong><br />
I think a lot of the digital world stuff comes from what I call digital myopia. If you only see the world from digital, you actually don&rsquo;t see the whole picture. You have to be holistic when you&rsquo;re at the CMO level.<br />
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<strong>What writing will you continue to do? </strong><br />
I&rsquo;ve been writing for Forbes for a number of years for the CMO Network, and I will need to remain objective on there. Whenever I write company pieces, I will write them on the Simulmedia blog, and I will tweet about the industry.<br />
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<strong>You&rsquo;ve switched a few times between startup and research gigs over the years. Anything that&rsquo;s stood out as your favorite job?</strong><br />
I&rsquo;ve always liked to be on the inside of a company, spend some time outside to see how the world is evolving, and then go back inside. If I had just gone from management job to management job, I would probably see the world a lot differently. Having interspersed [management jobs] with working at a startup or Forrester allows you to continue to use your understanding of what is going to work or what is not going to work.</p>
Advertising & BrandingTechnologyTelevisionCableDataDavid CoopersteinLauren JohnsonForrester ResearchMagazine ContentNetworksProgrammaticSimulmediaMon, 08 Sep 2014 00:23:07 +0000159902 at http://www.adweek.comYou Won't Believe How Big TV Still Ishttp://www.adweek.com/news/technology/you-wont-believe-how-big-tv-still-156039
Sam Thielman<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/tt-tv-hed-2014.jpg"> <p>
As the upfronts approach and the <a href="http://www.adweek.com/newfronts" target="_blank">NewFronts</a> try again to imitate them, expect to hear a lot about the twilight of traditional television with the rise of digital video. But don&rsquo;t believe it. A new study from Nielsen reveals the depth and breadth of both universes, and comparative viewership numbers aren&rsquo;t even close.</p>
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<img src="/files/imagecache/news-slide/tt-big-tv-01-2014.jpg" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; height: 513px; width: 350px;" />The study, conducted with ad targeting firm <a href="http://www.simulmedia.com" target="_blank">Simulmedia</a>, contains plenty of insights, but among the most striking is the size of either industry. Nielsen rarely pulls back the veil on exactly how big the TV and video worlds are (they do mint the currency in the former, after all), but here it is in black and white: There are 283 million television viewers monthly (the population of the United States is 313 million), each watching an average of 146 hours of TV. Compare that with 155 million online video viewers averaging just shy of six hours monthly on mobile and almost six and a half hours over the Web. So while TV&rsquo;s audience is still almost twice that of digital video, the amount of money in digital isn&rsquo;t even 5 percent of the mammoth $74 billion chunk of change in television. What&rsquo;s going to bring about growth in the former, said Amit Seth, Nielsen&rsquo;s evp, global media products, is equivalency.</p>
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ABC already offers digital options for audience deficiency units (ADUs, or makegoods), and Fox said last year it would provide <a href="/node/154583">Hulu</a> inventory for the same purpose (neither network was able to provide comment by press time), but Seth said he foresees greater porousness between digital video and TV. The company isn&rsquo;t just hoping for that&mdash;Nielsen&rsquo;s DPR product, which measures non-mobile streaming video, is set to finally launch in the spring after a delay. Nielsen also will be continuing to refine a tool that other third-party data miners are already selling: purchaser data that gives a measurable ROI to advertisers. &ldquo;We have access to 90-plus percent of credit card transactions, anonymized through a third-party data provider,&rdquo; said Seth. &ldquo;Do you shop home improvement? If so, do you shop at Home Depot or at Lowe&rsquo;s?&rdquo; Nielsen now knows.</p>
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Content producers like <a href="/node/153139">NBCUniversal </a>have pioneered similar initiatives, but it&rsquo;s impossible to overstate the importance of third-party measurement as the analytics world gets more complicated. Lest this sound like too much progress too quickly, Dave Morgan, founder and CEO of Simulmedia, says not to worry. Business as usual will probably continue apace for a while. &ldquo;The silos aren&rsquo;t coming down anytime soon,&rdquo; said Morgan. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a Silicon Valley expectation that there will be a desilo-ization of TV imminently, and nobody who took part in these dinners and discussions, not even the most ardent online people, thinks that&rsquo;s the case.&rdquo;</p>
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Morgan and Seth agree that the industry&rsquo;s best hope is in more granular data. &ldquo;The fuzzy intermedia metrics can lead to nothing but more debates at the ARF and the 4A&rsquo;s and the NAB and forever,&rdquo; said Morgan. &ldquo;But what you can&rsquo;t argue with is what happened after they saw the ad. What happened at the cash register?&rdquo;</p>
TechnologyTelevisionMarketing2014-15 Upfront4A’sCableSam Thielmandigital videoMagazine ContentNABNetworksNielsenOnlineRatingsSilicon ValleySimulmediaUpfrontVideoMon, 03 Mar 2014 03:41:00 +0000156039 at http://www.adweek.comStudy: Prime-Time Spending Wildly Inefficienthttp://www.adweek.com/news/television/study-prime-time-spending-wildly-inefficient-146699
Sam Thielman<p>
A new study from advertising consultancy <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-and-others-struggle-tv-simulmedia-sees-some-traction-143472" target="_blank">Simulmedia</a> suggests that there&#39;s a large disparity between <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/broadcast-spot-pricing-continues-creep-138106" target="_blank">prime-time ad spending </a>and the actual return on the investment. In the two-week period measured, more than half of TV ad dollars (54 percent, or about $91 million) were spent on the four-hour block between 8 p.m. and midnight, and yet only 34 percent of all measurable impressions were logged during that time.</p>
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Mind you, that&#39;s still a lot of impressions&mdash;certainly disproportionate to its share of the programming day&mdash;but conventional wisdom has had it for years that the most bang for your buck to be had was in prime time. Now, that&#39;s appearing to be less and less the case. Outfits like TiVO&#39;s TRA and PrecisionDemand&mdash;the latter run by former Nielsen CEO Jon Mandel&mdash;exist solely to parse consumer TV viewing and buying habits until there&#39;s a complete picture of a client&#39;s target user. It&#39;s a complicated process that involves a lot of data mining&mdash;PrecisionDemand works in concert with Little Rock, Ark.-based data giant <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/02/23/362182/index.htm" target="_blank">Acxiom</a>, but there are several other companies that do this sort of thing at work today&mdash;and at the end of it, they usually recommend buying a counterintuitive programming block such as, say, four hours on the Game Show Network in midafternoon.</p>
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The data in the Simulmedia report bears out other growing concerns with the TV ad world. The work week, for example, has become so fluid that networks can&#39;t count on viewers to be at home at the same time, resulting in more time-shifted viewing and more over-the-top media consumption via Netflix and Hulu.</p>
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&quot;By the end of 2012, there will be an estimated 78 million TVs in the U.S. connected to the Web,&quot; wrote the authors of the study. &quot;With penetration expected to grow to 147 million sets over the next five years, advertisers need to accept that linear TV is no longer the sole platform viewers use when they lean back on the couch to watch.&quot;</p>
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Granted, some of this is self-serving. Simulmedia offers guidance to media agencies and clients trying to buy the most valuable GRPs, so it has a vested interest in pointing out flaws in the traditional ad buying process. But they&#39;re not making the flaws up. Media agencies, too, are looking for more effective ways to reach advertisers, and with an increasing amount of data at their fingertips, it&#39;s bound to grow more specific <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/03/privacyframework.shtm" target="_blank">unless something else intervenes first</a>.</p>
TelevisionFood & BeverageAcxiomad spendingHuluNetflixSam ThielmanprimetimeSimulmediaTue, 22 Jan 2013 20:08:13 +0000146699 at http://www.adweek.comAs Google and Others Struggle in TV, Simulmedia Sees Some Tractionhttp://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-and-others-struggle-tv-simulmedia-sees-some-traction-143472
Mike Shields<p>
After five years of trying to crack the mythical-feeling smart TV market, <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120830/google-pulls-the-plug-on-its-tv-ads-business/" target="_blank">Google recently bowed out</a>, ditching its TV ads division.</p>
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The search giant&#39;s dropout came just a few months after <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/microsoft-scales-back-tv-ad-ambitions-140894" target="_blank">Microsoft shelved its own division</a>, which had been angling to leverage set-top data for better ad targeting.&nbsp;Throw in <a href="http://paidcontent.org/2012/02/23/419-why-canoe-abandoned-ship-with-interactive-tv-ads/" target="_blank">Canoe&rsquo;s demise</a>, and one might wonder whether <a href="http://www.beet.tv/2012/08/forrester-analyst-keen-on-addressable-tv-efforts-by-starcom-group-m-microsoft.html" target="_blank">addressable TV</a> is dead. But the lesser-known <a href="http://www.simulmedia.com" target="_blank">Simulmedia</a> is starting to gain some real traction.&nbsp;</p>
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According to CEO Dave Morgan, the company&nbsp;pulled in more dollars in Q1 than in all of 2011, while revenue in Q2 was three times larger than Q1. It&#39;s likely that such growth is partially the result of Simulmedia having a relatively small revenue base (the company, which boasts of backers such as Avalon Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Time Warner Investments, has only been around for about three years and doesn&#39;t release financial data just yet), but Morgan said the second half of 2012 is looking strong as well.</p>
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That growth, along with the fact that major broadcaseters like&nbsp;<a href="http://adage.com/article/special-report-tv-upfront/cbs-rates-shows-viewers-packaged-goods-consumption/233735/" target="_blank">CBS</a> have started incorporating some <a href="http://adage.com/article/media/cbs-viewers-age-sex-matter-marketers/149534/" target="_blank">supplemental data</a> into their upfront ad deals, could indicate that advance TV buying is becoming something real, if not the revolution the industry&rsquo;s been hoping for.</p>
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&ldquo;Without a doubt, we&rsquo;re using way more data for TV investment,&rdquo; said&nbsp;Greg Kahn, evp and business development director, Optimedia. Just maybe not the way that everybody expected. &ldquo;For a long time, the question has been &lsquo;when will set-top data become currency?&rsquo; That question still exists. But we&rsquo;re using more data with more networks and we&rsquo;re testing with Simulmedia on behalf of clients.&quot;</p>
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Kahn was vague on what clients are testing Simulmedia&#39;s services, revealing only that while the networks involved are big, the dollars are small at this point. The main tactic being tested is reach extension.</p>
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To explain: Simulmedia&#39;s prevailing theory is that given the fragmentation in the TV viewing market, buying TV the old-fashioned way (using sex and age demographics) leaves a lot of holes. When pitching clients, Morgan comes armed with tons of PowerPoint slides aimed at showing big TV spenders how much of their targets they&rsquo;re missing. Simulmedia use&nbsp;data from Nielsen, Kantar, <a href="http://FourthWall Media" target="_blank">FourthWall</a>&nbsp;Media and others, along with its own proprietary audience platform technology.</p>
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According to Morgan&#39;s numbers, a national retail chain misses a quarter of women ages 25-to-54, despite spending more than $20 million on TV. An insurance company misses out on over 20 million viewers within its adults 18-to-49 target, despite spending north of $23 million. A major cosmetic company strikes out on half of its female target.</p>
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&ldquo;People get upset at us with these charts,&rdquo; said Morgan. &ldquo;But we&rsquo;re starting to work with a number of agencies.&rdquo; Added Kahn:&nbsp;&ldquo;Our reaction is sometimes, &lsquo;wow, you think you&rsquo;re getting reach, but you could do a lot better.&quot;</p>
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In a nutshell, the way Simulmedia works is that it helps a retailer or insurance brand identify undervalued networks and shows to find its target, theoretically helping the brand reach a larger percentage of its target audience. &ldquo;Niche passion cable often wins,&rdquo; said Morgan.</p>
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That sort of complementary cherry-picking isn&rsquo;t likely to result in brands shifing huge chunks of their TV budgets, at least initially. Morgan expects dollars to move gradually, as TV adopts more of a Web-like buying mentality. In five years however, Morgan expects 20 percent of TV buying to have some kind of data attached.</p>
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That might be bullish. The TV marketplace has a long list of clever-sounding targeting advancements that <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/television/smg-comcast-addressable-system-cuts-ad-skipping-101636" target="_blank">have seemingly gone nowhere</a>. But agencies are likely to continue to push for more intelligent TV buying once they get a taste of better data. &ldquo;The industry does need to evolve,&rdquo; said Kahn.</p>
TechnologyTelevisionCbsGoogleKantar MediaMicrosoftMike ShieldsOptimediaSimulmediaZenithOptimediaMon, 10 Sep 2012 04:00:02 +0000143472 at http://www.adweek.com